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Why organisations work with Jeannie Walters She gives operators a working method, not a slogan: the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks turn customer-experience strategy into something a leadership team can run, not just endorse. She translates CX from a contact-centre function into a board-level commercial lever, framed around retention, loyalty, and the cost of reactive service. The dual credential set (CCXP and CSP) is unusual: she is certified in the discipline she speaks on and in the craft of speaking itself, which means content holds up under scrutiny from CX practitioners. A 2026 book with Mission Driven Press and Simon and Schuster distribution gives her thesis a citable spine, with named tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take back into the business. Reach into operating teams runs deeper than most keynote speakers: more than 500,000 LinkedIn Learning participants, plus the Experience Action podcast, mean her language is already inside many client organisations before she arrives. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, a customer experience consultancy founded in 2009. Author of “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations” (Mission Driven Press, April 2026). Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) and Professional Member of the National Speakers Association. Host of the Experience Action podcast, recognised by CX Network among its leading CX podcasts. LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners; named clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate, and SAP Litmos. Biography Most companies that say they are customer-centric are not. They are service-centric, organised to absorb complaints, route tickets and react to survey scores. The decisions that actually shape loyalty, retention and willingness to pay sit upstream, in product, operations and leadership, and that is the gap Jeannie Walters has spent two decades closing. She is the founder and CEO of Experience Investigators, the consultancy she launched in 2009 to help organisations design customer experience as a deliberate discipline rather than a reactive function. Her clients include Verizon, Siemens, GitLab, PayPal, BASF, Comcast, Allstate and SAP Litmos, and the work tends to focus on the same problem: leadership intent that does not survive contact with the operating model. Her 2026 book, “Experience Is Everything: Making Every Moment Count in the Age of Customer Expectations”, published by Mission Driven Press with Simon and Schuster distribution, sets out the thesis. CX is treated as a business discipline with named tools, including a CX Mission Statement, a CX Success Blueprint, and the Four Cs of CX Culture, that give leadership teams something to run rather than something to admire. Her CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks structure the operating side of that work. Credentials reinforce the practice. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional and a charter member of the Customer Experience Professionals Association, a Certified Speaking Professional, and a LinkedIn Learning instructor whose courses have reached more than 500,000 learners. The Experience Action podcast, named by CX Network among its top CX podcasts, extends her work into the day-to-day of leaders trying to put it into effect. Key speaking topics Customer experience strategy Customer loyalty and retention Proactive versus reactive customer experience Customer journey design Employee experience and CX alignment CX measurement and accountability AI in customer experience Ideal for Chief Customer Officers, Chief Experience Officers and CX leadership functions CMOs and Chief Revenue Officers responsible for retention and lifetime value Heads of operations and service in B2C and B2B businesses where churn is a board issue Senior leadership teams trying to convert customer-centric language into operating discipline Audience outcomes A working definition of customer experience as a commercial discipline, separate from customer service. A method for spotting where the journey is leaking value, drawn from the CXI Navigator and CXI Compass frameworks. A clearer link between CX investment and the metrics finance and the board care about: retention, lifetime value, churn cost. A practical view of how AI changes CX expectations, and where automation should and should not enter the journey. Language and tools (CX Mission Statement, CX Success Blueprint, Four Cs of CX Culture) leaders can take into the next operating review.

Why organisations work with Jeff Havens A defined thesis on generational workplaces, set out in his Pearson FT Press book “Us vs. Them,” that there are not four or five generations at work and that most generational training reinforces the problem it claims to solve. A keynote portfolio that covers four distinct organisational tensions, change (“Conquering Tomorrow”), leadership (“Unleash Your Inner Tyrant”), innovation (“Uncrapify Your Future”) and generations (“Us vs. Them”), each anchored in a published book or a defined argument. Built and runs Levity University, a microlearning platform of more than 400 courses serving over half a million learners a year, so the keynote sits on top of an operating training business, not just a speaking practice. A working comedian’s structure applied to a serious management argument, which is why CNBC and Fox Business book him as a recurring guest and why named clients including Ford, General Electric, JP Morgan, McDonald’s and Berkshire Hathaway use him at conferences where attention fatigue is the main risk. Biography highlights Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt University. Author of “Us vs. Them” (Pearson FT Press), “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!” and “Uncrapify Your Life!” Founder of The Jeff Havens Company and Levity University, with 400+ microlearning courses and 500,000+ annual learners. Recurring guest on Fox Business (including The Willis Report) and CNBC. Published in The Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Fast Company and BusinessWeek. Delivered over 1,000 keynotes to organisations including General Electric, Ford, US Bank, McDonald’s, JP Morgan, Honeywell, Berkshire Hathaway and Caesars. Biography Generational training is one of the most-bought and least-effective categories of corporate learning. Most of it asks employees to memorise the supposed traits of Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z, then sends them back to the same teams with the same friction. The conflict is real. The frame is wrong. That is the argument behind “Us vs. Them,” published by Pearson FT Press, in which Jeff Havens makes the case that there are not four or five distinct generations in the workplace, and that the visible conflict is better explained by age and life stage than by birth cohort. The book sits alongside “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant!” on leadership behaviour and “Uncrapify Your Life!” on innovation, three published positions on three of the most-requested categories in corporate keynotes. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vanderbilt and a former high school English teacher, Havens works at the intersection of stand-up comedy and management argument. The result is a presentation craft that holds a senior audience for a full hour. CNBC and Fox Business book him as a recurring guest for the same reason. His client list, General Electric, Ford, US Bank, McDonald’s, JP Morgan, Honeywell, Berkshire Hathaway, Caesars, is a list of organisations that buy attention as a scarce resource at their conferences. Beyond the keynote, he runs Levity University, a microlearning platform with over 400 courses and more than 500,000 annual learners. That operating business gives the speaking work a depth that pure-platform speakers rarely match: he is a practitioner who tests his content against a paying audience every week. Key speaking topics Generational dynamics in the workplace Leadership behaviour and management failure modes Innovation as an everyday discipline Change management and resistance Customer experience Corporate culture and communication Ideal for HR and L&D leaders running generational, culture or engagement programmes at scale Senior leadership conferences where attention fatigue across a long agenda is the main risk to the message CEO and divisional offsites looking to anchor a change, innovation or culture theme with a memorable plenary Industry association conferences (SHRM, ATD, MPI and equivalents) where mixed-seniority audiences need a single keynote that lands across the room Audience outcomes A working argument for why standard four-generations training does not reduce workplace friction, and what to do instead A clear language for naming leadership behaviours that quietly damage teams, drawn from “Unleash Your Inner Tyrant” A practical view of innovation as a habit available to every employee, not a function reserved for an R&D group A more confident stance for managers asked to lead change against fatigue and resistance A shared reference point, and shared humour, that a leadership team can take back into the room the next morning

Why organisations work with Jen Sincero Her four Badass books have sold more than five million copies in over forty languages, which gives audiences immediate familiarity and a shared vocabulary before she takes the stage. She speaks directly to the part of an engagement and retention problem that policy cannot fix: what people privately believe about their own potential, their right to earn, and their capacity to change a habit. Her audiobook narration of You Are a Badass won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association, evidence that the delivery itself, not only the writing, holds an audience. She is a regular speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, which gives her a track record at the scale and format most women’s leadership programmes commission. She is one of the few keynote names that consistently lifts attendance and registration for internal empowerment, mental fitness, and money mindset events without requiring topical reframing for each booking. Biography highlights Number-one New York Times bestselling author of You Are a Badass, with over five million copies sold and translation into more than forty languages Author of four titles in the Badass series, including You Are a Badass at Making Money, also a New York Times bestseller 2014 Audie Award winner from the American Audio Publishers Association for narration of You Are a Badass Featured speaker at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women Media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, The Dr. Oz Show, Oprah Magazine, Success Magazine, and The Howard Stern Show BA in English, Colorado College, 1987 Biography You Are a Badass became a slow-burn phenomenon after its 2013 release, climbing the New York Times bestseller list and staying there for years. The book reframed personal success as a problem of belief and habit rather than information. Jen Sincero wrote it, narrated it, and won the 2014 Audie Award from the American Audio Publishers Association for the audiobook. The Badass series now runs to four titles, including You Are a Badass at Making Money and Badass Habits, with combined sales of more than five million copies across forty languages. Sincero’s central argument is that the gap between what people say they want and what they do is held in place by inherited beliefs about money, worth, and what they are allowed to want. Closing that gap is the work of her books, coaching, and stage material. Her speaking practice is built for audiences inside organisations that have already tried policy answers to engagement and retention. She speaks at the Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Conference for Women, at corporate empowerment events, and at executive retreats where the brief is to shift what people privately believe is available to them. Her style is direct, comedic, and unapologetically practical, designed for action rather than reflection. Before the Badass books, Sincero was a freelance writer in Los Angeles and a workshop facilitator with the women’s entrepreneurial network Ladies Who Launch. She holds a BA in English from Colorado College. Her media credits include the New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Oprah Magazine, The Dr. Oz Show, and The Howard Stern Show. Key speaking topics Money mindset and wealth psychology Self-limiting belief and confidence Habit formation and behaviour change Personal motivation and empowerment Women’s leadership and entrepreneurship Ideal for CHROs and people leaders running engagement, retention, and internal mobility programmes Heads of DEI and women’s leadership networks commissioning conference and ERG keynotes Sales, broker, and advisor conferences where money belief and personal confidence determine output Internal empowerment, mental fitness, and culture moments inside large organisations Audience outcomes A direct, named language for the beliefs that quietly limit individual performance Specific habit-change tools drawn from Badass Habits, applicable from the day after the event A money-mindset frame that connects personal earning beliefs to commercial behaviour Higher attendance and registration energy around internal empowerment programming A shared reference that people leaders can carry into one-to-ones and team conversations

Why organisations work with Jenn Lim She carries the operating lineage of the Zappos culture work directly into the room. She built the original Zappos Culture Book and co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh, so the source material is hers, not borrowed. Her Beyond Happiness book gives buyers a single, named framework (the Greenhouse Method) they can point to, rather than a generic engagement talk. Wall Street Journal bestseller and Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. She works at the seam where personal purpose meets commercial outcome. The Me, We, Community model is built to be used by HR and leadership teams, not just admired on stage. Credibility with both ends of the buyer market: Fortune 500 cultures (Starbucks, McDonald’s, Pixar) and government audiences (World Government Summit, SHRM global events). Selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing places her inside the small group setting the policy conversation on workplace wellbeing, not just commenting on it. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO of Delivering Happiness, the culture consultancy that evolved from Tony Hsieh’s 2010 book of the same name. Author of Beyond Happiness (Grand Central Publishing, 2021), Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of 2021. Led the launch of Tony Hsieh’s Delivering Happiness, a #1 New York Times bestseller that stayed on the list for 27 weeks. Creator of the original Zappos Culture Book. Selected in 2017 to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing. Delivering Happiness named to the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Speaker at the World Government Summit, SHRM and inside Fortune 500 cultures including Starbucks, McDonald’s and Pixar. Biography Most workplace culture conversations start with the symptoms: low engagement, attrition, burnout, the lukewarm Glassdoor scores. Jenn Lim’s work starts a level deeper, with the question of whether the people inside an organisation actually have a reason to commit. That question has been her professional terrain for two decades, first inside Zappos, then through Delivering Happiness. The story is straight. Lim built the original Zappos Culture Book, which became the internal artefact that defined how Zappos talked about itself. She then co-founded Delivering Happiness with Tony Hsieh in 2010 and led the launch of his book, which sat on the New York Times bestseller list for 27 weeks. Delivering Happiness became a consultancy used by Fortune 500 cultures, Best Places to Work honourees and government bodies, and reached the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing private companies in 2020. Her own book, Beyond Happiness, was published by Grand Central in 2021 and named a Wall Street Journal bestseller and a Forbes Top Business Book of the year. The argument is operational: organisations get sustained engagement when individual purpose is connected to a clear organisational mission, and leaders are the variable that makes the connection real or hollow. The Greenhouse Method and the Me, We, Community framework give HR and leadership teams a structure they can run inside the business, not just a talk to applaud. What separates Lim from the broader wellbeing field is the lineage. She is not adapting someone else’s culture story for the stage. She built the source material, she co-founded the consultancy that productised it, and her selection to the Global Happiness Council of Work and Wellbeing in 2017 placed her inside the group shaping the policy conversation on this question. Key speaking topics Workplace culture and engagement Purpose-driven leadership Employee wellbeing Organisational change and resilience Authentic leadership Belonging and connection at work Ideal for CHROs and Chief People Officers redesigning engagement strategy after a period of restructure or fatigue Boards and executive teams reviewing the link between culture, purpose and commercial performance Heads of culture, DEI and employee experience inside Fortune 500 and large public-sector organisations Leadership development programmes focused on values-based and authentic leadership Audience outcomes A clear way to talk about purpose that connects individual employees to organisational mission, using the Me, We, Community model. The Greenhouse Method as a named structure for reducing burnout and rebuilding trust through change. The lessons from inside the Zappos culture build, told by the person who wrote the original Culture Book. A defensible language for wellbeing that goes beyond the surface wellness vocabulary leaders are tired of.

Why organisations work with Jermaine Harris A Sports Psychology MSc with Distinction sits behind the talk, so the resilience content rests on academic grounding rather than slogans. The Empowered Results Programme gives audiences a defined process to take away, not a one-off emotional lift that fades by Monday. His own near-amputation and recovery story is used as evidence for behaviour-change technique, which is why Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, and PGA EuroPro Group have brought him in. Audiences leave with usable mental tools drawn from his reading of more than 380 self-help titles, distilled by someone trained to assess what actually works. He is comfortable in front of mixed audiences from frontline staff to leadership, which makes him useful for company-wide kick-offs and sales conferences where a single speaker has to land across the room. Biography highlights BSc (Hons) and MSc (Distinction) in Sports Psychology ICF accredited Professional Coach and certified Firewalk Instructor Author of The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life! Founder of The Empowered Results Programme Corporate engagements with Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes Fundraiser and advocate for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, following his son’s diagnosis in 2015 Biography Resilience is one of the most over-claimed words in corporate wellbeing. The challenge for an HR or culture lead is to find a voice on the topic who can move beyond the language and actually shift how people behave on Monday morning. Jermaine Harris built his speaking practice around exactly that gap. His starting point was personal. A serious car accident and the threat of losing a leg ended a phase of heavy drinking and gambling. The interesting decision came next: he completed a BSc and an MSc with Distinction in Sports Psychology and used that training to study what actually changes behaviour. The Empowered Results Programme is the consolidated output of that work. Two published books, The Rut Buster and Lift Your Life!, give audiences something to take home, and an ICF coaching credential underpins the one-to-one work he runs alongside the keynotes. Admiral, Amazon, YouTube, PGA EuroPro Group, Forever Living, and Hallmark Care Homes have used him for company events where the brief is morale, motivation, and personal performance. What sets the work apart from standard motivational fare is the combination of an academic frame, a worked methodology, and a credible personal account of recovery. He also fundraises for the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, a cause connected to his son’s diagnosis at four weeks old in 2015. Key speaking topics Mindset and personal performance Resilience after setback Overcoming self-imposed limits Confidence and self-belief Behaviour change and habit formation Team motivation and morale Purpose and direction at work Ideal for HR and culture leads planning company-wide kick-offs, sales conferences, and morale events Frontline and customer-service organisations where motivation directly affects performance Wellbeing and L and D leads looking for resilience content with an academic underpin Sales and revenue teams running incentive or annual meetings Audience outcomes A defined process for resetting after a personal or professional setback Specific techniques for managing self-talk, fear, and limiting belief A short list of habit changes that translate into measurable daily behaviour A renewed sense of agency over career, health, and finance decisions Energy and lift, paired with content audiences can apply the next morning

Why organisations work with Jill Payne A working method, not a mood-lift. Her Energy Management framework gives leaders and teams a shared language for how they move, what they focus on, and how they talk to themselves under load. Credibility with high-performance environments. She has coached the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme on mental conditioning and culture, and applies the same playbook inside companies. A book the field has rated. Be a Dime won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in the Self-Help category, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Range across sectors that demand precision. Named corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. Tools audiences keep using. Her sessions hand over named practices, the Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence among them, that leaders can take back into their week. Biography highlights Author of Be a Dime: Unleash Your Inherent Energy and Live Life More Joyfully (Figure 1 Publishing). Gold Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award, Self-Help, 2024. Master’s in Workplace Wellness / Employee Engagement & Workplace Performance; undergraduate degrees in Human Kinetics and Education. Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach to the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme. Former Team Canada athlete in Sprint Canoe and Rugby. Corporate clients include Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, Western Union, NBC. Biography Most wellbeing programmes treat burnout as something to soften after the fact. Payne treats it earlier, as a question of capacity. How a leader moves through the day, what they choose to attend to, and the running dialogue they hold with themselves all sit upstream of how much pressure they can absorb before judgement slips. That logic became the Energy Management framework, now used inside organisations across North America. The method is built on three working levers, body, focus, and dialogue, which Payne treats as a single system rather than three wellness habits. Her book Be a Dime sets out the approach in long form and won Gold at the 2024 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards in Self-Help, published by Figure 1 Publishing. Her credibility comes from working inside environments where the cost of poor energy is immediate. As Mental Conditioning and Culture Coach with the Canadian Women’s Olympic Rugby 7’s programme, she applied the same method she now brings to senior teams at Google, NASA, McDonald’s, Sony, PepsiCo, Boeing, and Western Union. The academic spine is a Master’s in Workplace Wellness and Employee Engagement, layered on undergraduate work in Human Kinetics and Education. For an organisation absorbing change fatigue or watching engagement scores drift, Payne gives leaders a concrete operating practice, not another wellness initiative. The work is closer to mental performance coaching than to mindfulness, and it equips senior teams to keep showing up clearly when conditions tighten. Key speaking topics Energy management and personal capacity Burnout prevention and recovery Resilience under sustained pressure High-performance team culture Mental conditioning for leaders Joy and engagement at work Workplace wellbeing strategy Ideal for CHROs, CPOs, and heads of talent rebuilding engagement after sustained change Senior leadership teams managing performance under prolonged pressure Wellbeing and learning leads moving past surface-level wellness programming High-performance functions, sales, trading floors, clinical leadership, where capacity is the constraint Audience outcomes A working vocabulary for energy as an organisational capacity, not a private wellness concern The Body, Focus, Dialogue (BFD) sequence as a practice that leaders can apply that week A clearer read on the early indicators of burnout inside their own teams Specific practices for joy and recovery that are grounded in evidence, not slogans A reframe of resilience as a daily operating habit, taught and reinforced

Why organisations work with Jim Knight Twenty years inside Hard Rock International leading global training, not a consultant looking in from outside. The frameworks he teaches were stress-tested across cafes, hotels, and casinos in fifty-plus countries. A culture and service argument anchored in the Culture That Rocks series: Culture That Rocks, Leadership That Rocks and Service That Rocks (the latter two Amazon No. 1 bestsellers), and now Engagement That Rocks, the final book in the series. Four books, one consistent thesis, not a topic catalogue. Practical fluency in the operating mechanics of training, onboarding, and frontline development. The work translates for hospitality, retail, franchise, and any business where the customer meets the brand through a junior employee. A delivery style built for energy-driven audiences. Knight’s background as a music teacher and his Hard Rock pedigree mean conference and franchise audiences treat him as a peer, not an academic visitor. Biography highlights Twenty years leading Global Training and Development for Hard Rock International, including Corporate University, e-learning, and leadership transition programmes. Founder and CEO of Knight Speaker, delivering culture, leadership, service, and engagement programmes worldwide. Author of the Culture That Rocks series: Culture That Rocks (third edition), Leadership That Rocks and Service That Rocks (both Amazon No. 1 bestsellers), and Engagement That Rocks, the final book in the series. Contributing member of the Rolling Stone Culture Council since 2020. Multiple Telly Awards for corporate training video, plus Brandon Hall Gold Best in Class for service recovery e-learning. Lifetime member of CHART. Culture That Rocks featured by Entrepreneur Magazine among the books most likely to change how a business is run. Biography Hard Rock built a global brand on the idea that the cafe, the hotel, and the casino should each feel like a live show. Holding that standard across more than fifty countries is not a marketing job. It is a training job. For two decades, Jim Knight ran that training function. That experience sits behind the Culture That Rocks series. The first book argued that culture is the operating system, not the wallpaper, and was named by Entrepreneur Magazine among the books most likely to change how a business is run. Leadership That Rocks and Service That Rocks carried the thesis into how leaders behave and how the customer feels the brand, and both reached Amazon’s No. 1 spot. Engagement That Rocks, the most recent book in the series, closes it on the argument that engaged employees are the mechanism holding all of it together. The work translates particularly well for organisations whose product is delivered by frontline staff at scale: hospitality, retail, franchise systems, healthcare networks, and any consumer brand where a twenty-year-old in a uniform is the face of a billion-dollar logo. Knight speaks to those audiences as someone who has trained that workforce, not theorised about it. Beyond the speaking practice, he contributes to the Rolling Stone Culture Council and supports No Kid Hungry and Cannonball Kids’ Cancer through book and speaking proceeds. Among bureau-circuit culture speakers, the rarity is the operator pedigree. Most started as consultants. Knight started inside the room. Key speaking topics Organisational culture Customer experience and service differentiation Employee engagement and retention Leadership development Team building and frontline talent Hospitality, franchise, and consumer-brand operations Ideal for CHROs, learning and development leaders, and culture leads in consumer-facing organisations Franchise systems and multi-site operators where culture must scale across independent owners Hospitality, retail, and service-brand leadership audiences Conference and annual-meeting audiences looking for a high-energy culture keynote with operating substance Audience outcomes A working definition of culture as an operating system, with the mechanisms that hold it in place at scale Specific moves on hiring, onboarding, and frontline development drawn from Hard Rock’s training playbook A service-design lens for separating a brand experience from competitor parity Language and structure leaders can use to talk about engagement without falling into wellness-industry generalities

Why organisations work with Joanne Lockwood A rare combination of lived experience as a transgender woman and the formal speaker credentials of a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I, which gives leaders both authenticity and confidence in how the message will land in a corporate room. A timely reading of what AI means for people and culture, drawn from two decades running IT businesses and her inclusion practice: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and an emerging “AI readiness divide” quietly decide who belongs at work and who gets left behind. Practical experience translating inclusion into operational HR practice through SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after exiting a £3m IT services business she had run for two decades. A track record at scale with employers including Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, Molson Coors and Wates Group, across retail, professional services, housing and the NHS. A delivery style summarised by her own mantra, Smile, Engage, Educate, that lowers the temperature of difficult conversations and lets senior teams engage with trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion without defensiveness. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, SEE Change Happen, a diversity, inclusion and belonging consultancy specialising in transgender awareness and workplace inclusion. Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I. Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals. First openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland. Host of the Inclusion Bites podcast and featured subject of the Channel 4 / RDF documentary The Making of Me. Former Trustee of akt, the LGBT+ youth homelessness charity, and volunteer with Beyond Reflections. Biography Most organisations have an inclusion statement. Far fewer have a workforce that knows how to act on it. The gap between published intent and daily behaviour is where culture either compounds or quietly erodes, and it is the space Joanne Lockwood has built her practice around. SEE Change Happen, the consultancy she founded after a career that ran from the Royal Air Force to a £3m IT services business of 25 staff, works with employers to translate DEI policy into the language and habits of line managers. The work is grounded in trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion, where she has personal authority as a transgender woman, and extends into belonging and inclusive recruitment. Clients include Levi Strauss, lululemon EMEA, HarperCollins UK, Unilever, LexisNexis Risk Solutions, Ogilvy, and Wates Group. Her newest work takes the same lens to artificial intelligence. Drawing on her years running IT businesses, she treats AI as a culture and belonging question rather than a technical one: how automated hiring, AI-assisted grievances, and the gap she calls the “AI readiness divide” decide who gets designed in and who gets left behind. Her framing is blunt. AI does not create culture; it amplifies the culture it enters. Recognition from her own profession reinforces the work. She is a Fellow of the Professional Speaking Association UK&I and a Fellow of the Institute of Equality and Diversity Professionals, and her published thinking runs through the Inclusion Bites podcast and contributions to HRZone, The HRD, and Training Zone. She was the first openly transgender National President of Round Table Great Britain and Ireland, and the subject of Channel 4 and RDF’s documentary The Making of Me. Key speaking topics AI, belonging and the human future of work Inclusive culture and belonging Trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion Inclusive leadership and engagement Workplace allyship Inclusive recruitment and hiring practice Culture change and DEI strategy Ideal for CHROs, heads of DEI and employee experience leaders rebuilding inclusion practice beyond statements and training modules. Executive teams and boards preparing for substantive conversations on trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion in a contested public climate. Leadership and HR teams working out what AI means for their people, their hiring, and their culture. Talent acquisition and people-team leaders working on inclusive recruitment, onboarding and line-manager capability. Audience outcomes A clearer view of where inclusion policy is and is not shaping daily workplace behaviour, and the specific points at which it breaks down. Direct, practical language for trans and LGBTQ+ inclusion that leaders and line managers can use without fear of getting it wrong. A practical way to treat AI as a culture and inclusion issue, including where human judgement has to stay in hiring and employee-relations decisions. A working definition of allyship that goes beyond visible support and into the everyday decisions managers make about hiring, promotion and team culture. Renewed confidence to engage with DEI as a leadership responsibility rather than an HR programme.

Why organisations work with Joe Gerstandt He reframes inclusion as organisational design work, with named practices leaders can actually run, rather than a values campaign that depends on goodwill. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative gives sceptical audiences a credible personal entry point, useful in rooms where DEI language has lost its purchase. Co-author of Social Gravity, a published thesis on how relationship dynamics shape collective performance, which gives the work an intellectual spine beyond bureau talking points. Sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and the ISO US Technical Advisory Group on Diversity and Inclusion, meaning his frameworks have been tested inside platform governance and global standards. Marine Corps veteran turned culture practitioner, with a delivery register that lands credibly in industrial, defence, and engineering-led organisations where conventional DEI speakers often do not. Biography highlights Co-author, Social Gravity: Harnessing the Natural Laws of Relationships. Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council, Twitter. US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, International Organization for Standardization. Board director, Tri-Faith Initiative, Nebraska. Featured contributor, Workforce Diversity Network Expert Forum. Clients include Boeing, Toyota, Nestle, Target, Eli Lilly, Marathon Oil, Cornell University, University of Michigan, the CIA and the FAA. Biography Inclusion work has hit a credibility ceiling inside many large organisations. Twenty years of programmes, statements and training have not translated into the operating changes leaders were promised, and the political pressure on DEI has stripped away the cover that older approaches relied on. The result is a leadership population that knows the work matters but no longer trusts the standard playbook. Joe Gerstandt has spent the past two decades rebuilding the work on different ground. His starting point is that inclusion is a design problem, not a sentiment problem. Behaviour, norms, decision rights, conflict practices and conversational habits are the actual machinery. His sessions teach leaders to operate that machinery, with concrete practices around brave conversations, authenticity, and team design. Two strands give the work its weight. Social Gravity, which he co-authored, sets out the relational dynamics that determine whether collective performance compounds or decays. His “From Anti to Ally” narrative draws on his own move from rural Iowa and the Marine Corps into culture work, giving sceptical audiences a credible bridge into the material without asking them to start from agreement. The institutional record matters. He sits on Twitter’s Intersectional Culture and Diversity Advisory Council and on the ISO US Technical Advisory Group’s Diversity and Inclusion Working Group, advises Fortune 100 employers and federal agencies including the CIA and FAA, and has published in Diversity Best Practices, Diversity Executive and HR Executive. That positions him as a practitioner whose frameworks have been pressure-tested against platform governance, global standards and operating reality. Key speaking topics Inclusion as organisational design Inclusive leadership practice Authenticity and psychological safety at work Team performance and relational dynamics Behaviour change and culture change Allyship and personal transformation Bias, identity and decision-making Ideal for CHROs, Chief Diversity Officers and culture leads rebuilding inclusion programmes that have lost internal credibility. Executive teams running culture change inside engineering, defence, industrial and regulated environments where conventional DEI delivery falls flat. Boards and leadership cohorts treating inclusion as a leadership capability rather than a compliance line. Employee resource group leaders and allies seeking practical practice, not slogans. Audience outcomes A working definition of inclusion as a designed practice, separable from political language. Named behaviours and conversational practices leaders can use the next working day. A clearer read on where their organisation’s inclusion work has stalled and why. Language for engaging sceptics and ambivalent middle managers without forcing ideological agreement. A frame for treating relational dynamics as a performance variable, drawn from Social Gravity.

Why organisations work with Joe Mull He has a named, defensible framework, Employalty, that reduces engagement to three operating levers (Ideal Job, Meaningful Work, Great Boss) and links each to retention, reputation and revenue. He brings the credibility of running learning and development inside a major US healthcare employer, UPMC Physician Services, so the content lands with operators rather than HR theorists. He is one of fewer than 300 living speakers inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, a body of work recognised by his peers in 2025. Publishers Weekly named Employalty a top business book of the year, which gives the keynote an evidence base buyers can quote back to their executive team. He owns the manager-as-multiplier argument with specific, repeatable behaviours, not generic “be a better boss” framing, which is what a CHRO actually needs to commission a change programme around. Biography highlights 2025 inductee, Professional Speakers Hall of Fame (CPAE), National Speakers Association. Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), NSA. Author of Employalty, named a top business book of the year by Publishers Weekly. Author of No More Team Drama and Cure for the Common Leader. Former Head of Learning and Development, Physician Services, University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC). Host of Boss Better Now, ranked among the top management podcasts globally. Named to Global Gurus’ Top 30 Management Speakers list in 2026. Contributor to and featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and Harvard Business Review. Biography Engagement scores are a lagging measure of something more basic: whether people have a reason to commit. After three years of forced redesign, employees are choosier, quieter and more willing to walk, and the manager layer is where most organisations lose them. That is the territory Joe Mull works in. His Employalty framework, set out in the book Publishers Weekly named a top business book of the year, names three conditions that decide whether an employee commits or coasts: an Ideal Job, Meaningful Work, and a Great Boss. The argument is operational. Each lever maps to a manager behaviour, and each manager behaviour maps to retention, reputation and revenue. Before he was a keynote speaker, Mull ran learning and development for Physician Services at UPMC, one of the largest physician groups in the United States. That history matters. The content was built inside a healthcare employer under real workforce pressure, not derived from survey data, which is why operators tend to leave his sessions with specific things to change on Monday. In 2025 he was inducted into the Professional Speakers Hall of Fame, a recognition fewer than 1% of professional speakers receive. His podcast Boss Better Now sits among the most-listened-to management shows, and his commentary appears in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune and Harvard Business Review. The through-line across all of it is the same wager: that the quality of bosses, not the quality of perks, decides whether a workforce stays. Key speaking topics Employee commitment and retention The manager-employee relationship as a business lever Workplace culture in the post-pandemic labour market Team dynamics and workplace conflict Leadership development for frontline and mid-level managers Workforce trends and the changing social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leaders rebuilding retention and engagement strategy Heads of learning and development designing manager capability programmes Healthcare, hospitality, professional services and other high-turnover sectors CEO and executive offsites where culture and people strategy are on the agenda Audience outcomes A shared language for what actually drives commitment at work, anchored in the Employalty framework A clear read on where the manager layer is creating or destroying retention Specific behaviours managers can adopt to lift discretionary effort A sharper view of the trade-offs between engagement spend and manager capability investment Practical tools for addressing team drama, gossip and the conflict patterns that drain culture

Why organisations work with Joel Zeff He pulls people out of their seats and into the room. Improv games run live with audience volunteers, not slides about engagement, are the mechanism the audience remembers a week later. He has done this more than 2,500 times since 1997, for buyers including Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS. The format is tested at scale. His book Make the Right Choice (Wiley, 2nd edition) gives leaders a written reference for the principles, so the keynote leaves a tangible artefact for managers to apply. He writes and performs his own material. The journalism background, including a recruited move to the Dallas Times Herald and freelance work for Newsday, shows up in tight scripting and audience-aware writing. For internal sales kickoffs, leadership offsites, and culture moments where the room needs to be activated rather than briefed, Zeff is one of the few keynote speakers whose primary craft is the performance itself. Biography highlights Author of Make the Right Choice: Lead with Passion, Elevate Your Team, and Unleash the Fun at Work, second edition published by Wiley More than 2,500 keynote events for corporate and association audiences since 1997 Former newspaper journalist; recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, with freelance bylines for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram Former account executive at Edelman Public Relations Appeared on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch Named clients include Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS Biography Engagement is the corporate problem that has resisted three decades of solutions. Surveys, town halls, pulse tools, and culture decks all describe it well. Almost none of them change the temperature in the room. Joel Zeff’s keynotes start from a different premise. If the room feels alive, the conversation about engagement starts to mean something. If it does not, no framework will fix that. Zeff trained as a newspaper journalist before he was a speaker. He started at the Saginaw News covering crime and accidents, was recruited to the Dallas Times Herald in 1991, and freelanced for Newsday and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram after the Herald closed. He then worked as an account executive at Edelman Public Relations and founded his own consulting practice in 1994. The improv comedy he was doing on weekends turned into his career when Texas Instruments asked him to bring the act to an executive retreat. The format he has built over 2,500 events since 1997 is unusual in a corporate setting. Audience members come on stage, play improvisation games, and produce, in real time, the behaviours the keynote is describing: listening, building on each other’s ideas, taking initiative, recovering from mistakes in front of a crowd. Wells Fargo, Samsung, KPMG, PepsiCo, Walmart, and the IRS have all booked the act. His book Make the Right Choice, now in its second edition with Wiley, sets out the principles in writing for leaders who want a reference after the room has gone home. What organisations actually buy from Zeff is a live demonstration that the soft skills they keep training for are produced under pressure, not in workshops. The improv stage is a faster way to see them than any management exercise. Key speaking topics Employee engagement Workplace culture Team collaboration and communication Change and adaptability at work Creativity and innovation in everyday work Leadership and motivation Workplace humour and human connection Ideal for Sales kickoffs and annual conferences where the opening or closing keynote needs to lift the room, not brief it Leadership offsites focused on team behaviour, communication, and collaboration Culture, engagement, and HR-led events where managers leave needing something they can act on with their teams Association conferences and customer events that combine substance with a live, interactive set piece Audience outcomes A shared, recent experience of what genuine collaboration looks like, generated live in the room rather than described in slides Specific language and prompts from improv (listening, “yes and”, supporting the person on stage with you) that managers can carry back into team meetings A reset on the role of humour, energy, and play in serious work, with named examples from organisations the audience recognises A written reference, via Make the Right Choice, for leaders who want to extend the keynote ideas into team practice

Why organisations work with Johnny C Taylor Jr He speaks for the formal voice of the global HR profession. SHRM represents nearly 340,000 members influencing more than 362 million workers, which gives his read on workforce trends institutional weight no individual consultant can claim. His book RESET gives executives a structured argument for treating talent, culture, and inclusion as the primary commercial constraint, not technology or capital. He has testified to Congress on workforce policy and chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, so he can frame people decisions inside the actual policy and regulatory weather boards are operating in. He writes USA Today’s weekly “Ask HR” column and co-hosts The Work Wire podcast, which keeps his content tested against real questions from working managers, not theory. He has run the talent function at large operating companies including Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group, so the perspective is operator-grounded, not academic. Biography highlights President and CEO of SHRM, the largest HR professional body in the world, with members in 180 countries. Author of RESET: A Leader’s Guide to Work in an Age of Upheaval, a Wall Street Journal and national bestseller. Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources; named Distinguished Executive of the Year by the Academy of Management. Former CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund; chaired the President’s Advisory Board on Historically Black Colleges and Universities. Board director at XPO, Inc. (NYSE: XPO), Guild Education, and Flores HR; Vice Chair, University of Miami Board of Trustees. USA Today columnist on workplace questions; co-host of The Work Wire podcast. Biography The workforce that most boards still describe is the workforce they had in 2019. The one they actually employ has been remade by remote work, AI deployment, five generations on the org chart, and political tension that now arrives at the office door. SHRM’s research, and the questions arriving in Taylor’s USA Today column every week, point at the same gap. Taylor leads SHRM, the global professional body for human resources, with nearly 340,000 members across 180 countries. The seat gives him a working dataset of how organisations of every size are responding to AI adoption, hybrid work, talent scarcity, and contested cultural questions. RESET, his 2021 Wall Street Journal bestseller, made the central argument plainly: the binding constraint on most companies is not capital or technology, it is whether they can find, hire, and engage the people who can use either one. That argument is unusual because it comes from an operator. Before SHRM he was CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund and held senior HR and legal roles at Paramount Pictures, Blockbuster, IAC, and Compass Group USA. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources, holds a JD and MA from Drake University, and is admitted to the bar in Florida, Illinois, and Washington, D.C. He has testified to Congress on sexual harassment, paid leave, and workforce development, chaired the President’s Advisory Board on HBCUs, and serves on the boards of XPO, Guild Education, and Flores HR. The Academy of Management named him Distinguished Executive of the Year in 2020. For senior teams trying to run a credible people strategy in front of a board that wants commercial answers, that combination of practitioner authority, policy access, and published thesis is hard to assemble from any other speaker on the topic. Key speaking topics Future of work Talent acquisition and retention Workplace civility and culture AI and the human workforce Workforce policy and regulation Inclusion in a contested political climate Multigenerational workforce dynamics Employee engagement and the social contract of work Ideal for CHROs and senior HR leadership wrestling with talent, engagement, and culture as board-level metrics. CEOs and boards of directors recalibrating workforce strategy around AI, hybrid models, and inclusion. Industry associations and member events convening HR, legal, and operations leaders. Executive offsites and town halls where the people agenda is the central commercial question. Audience outcomes A clearer view of which workforce shifts are temporary and which are structural. A defensible case for treating culture, civility, and engagement as commercial inputs, with evidence drawn from SHRM’s member data. A sharper read on how policy, regulation, and political climate will shape people decisions over the next 12 to 24 months. Practical positions on AI adoption, hybrid work, and inclusion that can survive contact with a sceptical board. A vocabulary for talking about talent that aligns HR, finance, and the C-suite around the same problem.